India Cements loss widens to Rs 240 crore in Q2 FY25

CHENNAI: India Cements loss tripled in the quarter ended Sept 30, 2024 at Rs 240 crore against Rs 81.4 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. It comes after the company posted a net profit of Rs 57.5 crore in Q1 FY25 following consecutive losses in five earlier quarters.

Revenue from operations of the Chennai-headquartered cement manufacturer, in which Aditya Birla group company UltraTech Cement has announced to acquire a majority stake, declined by 16.8% in Q2 FY25 at Rs 1,222.1 crore over Rs 1,016.6 crore during the year ago quarter.

In a statement on Friday, India Cements said the performance of the company for the quarter and half year ended Sept 30, 2024 was adversely affected by a free fall in cement prices. The sharp decline in selling prices resulted in a drop in net plant realisation (NPR) by 13% impacting the margins, resulting in a negative EBIDTA of Rs 154 crore for the second quarter of FY25, it added.

While the capacity utilisation of the company improved during the second quarter to 59% from 50% in the first quarter, the volume during the July-Sept quarter of FY25 was down to 23 lakh tonne as compared to 23.7 lakh tonne YoY. The overall sales for the half year were 42.6 lakh tonne as compared to 50.4 lakh tonne in the previous year, a drop of 15%, it added.

The statement further said the quarter and the half year ended Sept 30, 2024 was very tough for the industry in general caused by various factors including the prolonged elections in the country for more than two months in the first quarter, heat waves and floods that hit some parts of the country.

However, with the renewed focus on infrastructure in the budget with big ticket investment projects, the expectations are that cement demand may pick up and the experts predict an average growth of around 7% for this year for cement demand. This was evident with an improvement in the cement growth of around 7.1% in September, it added.


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